This is episode number 2179. Jill and I are talking about how to negotiate a better price without losing the land deal. It’s interesting because Jill and I were talking about this before we turned the camera on. She said, “Who says negotiate? What kind of negotiation?”

I don’t play that game. I might read my price when I get more information, but I’m not here to haggle. This is not buying more shot glasses on vacation. Do you know what I mean? How many margarita sets do we all really need?

Jill’s referring to Tijuana.

How many Mexican blankets do I need? Every shop thinks you need to buy five. Apparently, I don’t need that many. 

Jill and I are talking about odds and topics that I chose from a big list of topics that our producer gave me. If you don’t like the topics that we’re talking about, you know who to blame. Me. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum and take a deep dive into land-related topics by popular request.

Garrison wrote, “I’m looking for advice from those who’ve transitioned from a full-time job to being a full-time Land Academy investor. What steps did you handle yourself, and which ones did you outsource? For example, I often use myself for work and might be on calls. Would it be worth outsourcing tasks like answering incoming calls until I grow my land investing business to full-time? I appreciate any insights.” Welcome, Garrison. I’m glad you’re here. I love that you’re already thinking like that.

From A Job To Full-Time Land Investing

You need to brace yourself that for about 18 to 24 months, maybe a little bit longer, with a full-time job, you’re going to be running on a small number of hours of sleep per night.

It will pay off.

If you do it correctly and you’re mentally into it, you’re bought into it, and you want the lifestyle change, it’ll pay off in spades. I don’t think you should be outsourcing anything for the first twelve months.

I would say one thing, though. Someone doesn’t even answer the phone live. I’ll give you that. If you have to have a service to answer the calls while you’re at your day job, the ones that you can’t take, I would do that. If you are on a budget, don’t turn them on for three months. You could turn them on from 9:00 to 5:00 . You could even turn them on for when you don’t get the call in the first three rings and they take the call. Stuff like that would be ways to budget this and get it done because you don’t want to lose those deals.

Honest Self-Assessment Of Success & Failure Before Starting

My advice to you is not so much about what you should outsource. Maybe Jill can handle that, or you already did. I would rather see you, anybody else who is reading this, and who’s brand new or considering doing this to have a straight, honest conversation with yourself about what it’s going to be like, how long it’s going to take, and if you want it truly.

I would take a piece of paper, or however you brainstorm with yourself. Maybe it’s with your spouse. Maybe it’s in Excel, which is how I do it. Write down all the stuff that you have very seriously succeeded at on one side. On the other side, in its simplest form, are the stuff that you think you’ve failed at. At the same time, why? I succeeded as a young person in learning Chinese. Why? I don’t know. I was into it. They offered it. By the time I was in sixth grade, I could speak it, but I’m not necessarily into it. Who knows?

This is our tenth year of being the ringleaders at Land Academy. One guy in Career Path said, “I sold all three of my restaurants. I didn’t like it, but they were successful.” I can’t imagine, for the record, owning three restaurants. I can’t imagine owning one, how hard that must be, and how time-consuming it is. You’re dealing with a lot of members of the public, both from an employee standpoint and a customer standpoint. If you made that work, this is a delight. It’s a delight to do a couple of real estate deals a month. It’s all about you and where you are coming from to meet Land Academy or meet this new career. This is not easy, but very profitable.

I’m going to add to this, not only that part you said, but I’m talking about the realistic stuff, too, like getting started. If you’re not an Excel pro or you’re not a data person, you can outsource that à la carte, and it might be worth your while. If it takes you three weeks to do this and it’s taking away from other stuff and getting your business going, then I would use Offers2Owners to help with the data and get it ready for pricing and things like that. That’s some stuff you can do.

Overall, though, in the very beginning, you’ll be working two full-time jobs. The little things you need, you lean on and ask the group like you are, which is great, Garrison. Keep doing that. You take on as much as you can yourself and learn it. It might be in the evenings. It might be your lunch hour. It might be the 4:00 AM club. We still have lots of those going on in Land Academy. You get it done, and you will get through it. If you can commit to it, say no to a lot of stuff, and maybe don’t take as many trips or any trips. We’ve done that. Put your head down for 18 months to 2 years. You come up for air and look at your bank balance, and you’re going to be happy.

This is a business that, if you run it yourself, you can do very well. Once you know how to train other people to do the stuff you don’t want to do, you can leverage them as sources of labor or internally as employees.

On a side note, you said something about writing down successes and failures. I wrote down a few. Here’s one of my successes. I like decorating and furniture shopping. One of my failures was getting Jack on board while I’m decorating and furniture shopping.

Where’s this coming from?

I don’t know. My girlfriends were at the house, and we were talking about that. That came to my mind.

There were multiple of Jill’s girlfriends here at our house for a few days. Our topic is How to Negotiate a Better Price Without Losing the Land Deal.

Price Adjustments, Not Haggling

Here’s the big picture. If you’ve been tuning in to us for a while, you know that there’s no negotiation thing. That’s not what we talk about, but sometimes, there’s a little bit of back and forth. I’m going to call them price adjustments, like everyone on Zillow and Realtor. They’re calling them price adjustments. Sometimes, it’s down, and sometimes, it’s up. My goal is not to get someone on the phone. My goal is not to send out an offer high or low to strike up a conversation and start negotiating. That’s not this.

If you’ve been tuning in for a while, you know this. If not, you’re reading about it. Jack does a good job of putting our mailers together ahead of time, picking these amazing areas where they’re going to work, running these red, yellow, green tests, and pitting ZIP codes against each other to pick the right areas for these offers to go out.

He puts together amazing offers. The goal is that when the person gets our letter, they have a beautiful page one talking about us. Page two is a purchase agreement that they can sign and send back, or take a picture of it, fax it, email it, or whatever, and get it back to us. That’s pretty much going to be a price that works for us. However, sometimes, it might be lower, and it makes sense, than what I would pay. Sometimes, it’s higher than what would make sense for what I’m going to pay. That’s not like, “Gloves on,” and we’re negotiating like it’s Tijuana. That’s not what we’re doing.

When someone calls in, the first thing to do is make sure you’re on the same page about the price. You have to get a number on that first call—don’t let them off the phone until you do. Share on X

How it works is when the person comes in, my first thing for everyone is, “Let’s make sure they’re on the same page with the price.” If they’re on the same page with the price, great. I’m going to power forward, assuming that that’s going to be great. What’s going to happen next is I’m going to do my due diligence and confirm it all.

My first thing is to get on the same page on that very first phone call with a number. If it’s not my number, what’s their number? My conversation with them is about finding out more about the property. “Why do you think it’s worth more? Did you put a well in there? Is there something I didn’t pick up on? What’s going on?” I get that information and do not say, “I’ll get back to you with a higher price.” That’s not what we do. I get their number, like, “I hear you. You did this. It looks like the county didn’t pick up on that. Let me go look at it. Maybe it is worth more. I’m going to get back to you.”

I threw out a price and they gave me a number back. You cannot let them off the phone until you get their number. Never play the game of, “I’m going to come back with a better number tomorrow,” because then you’re on down a negotiation spiral that is a disaster. You have to push them for a number. As crazy as it might be, get something out of them so you know where they’re coming from. You’re going to go, “I need to know what’s the best number. How can I reach you tomorrow?”

I’m going to do my work. I’m going to go back and look. Maybe it does command a higher price. Maybe they did do something to the property that does command more. I’ve had stuff where it was in an unusual zoning that was a special equestrian area. It did command a higher price. Nothing anyone could have picked up on. I’m like, “All right.”

That’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go back, do your due diligence, check the numbers, double-check everything, make all the calls that you need to make sure with the county, and fill in the blank so you can come back with one last run at this. You’re either going to say, “I get it. I can make that work,” or you’re going to come back with, “I’m so sorry. I can’t make that work, but here is my new number. It might even be that my new number is my old number. I can’t come off that.” That’s it. That’s the end of the thing. You did everything.

You can't talk someone into doing something they don't want to do. Share on X

You’ve got the full picture. You had time to go look at the Access and all eight As, so you feel good about it. You either feel good about your price, or you feel good about their price, or you have a new price. That’s it. They’re either going to accept it, and you’re going to proceed happily and open escrow that day, or you’re going to let it go. You’re going to say, “Here it is. I heard what you said. This is still my best price. If anything changes, please hang onto my letter. I’ll be here. Let me know. Maybe we can work something out in the future and let it go.” You’re not going to overpay. Why would you overpay? That’s the only other thing.

You’re also not going to talk somebody into something that they don’t want to do.

It may not be a real seller.

The Power Of Predictable Deals & No-Haggle Pricing

Negotiate shouldn’t be in the title, but I put it in there so we can have this conversation. You’re tuning in to this show with people who have a huge depth of experience, Jill and I, for a reason. There are other land shows out there with people who are much younger and possibly more entertaining, but no one’s out there saying that they did 16,000 deals. I’m not bragging. I’m saying this because I know the percentages. I know how this goes. I know what’s going to happen when I send a mailer out before I send it out.

Jill and I have done about slightly over 16,000 transactions, 16,000 lands we have purchased and sold. You make your money in this business on the buy side. The reason that we bought those properties so inexpensively is that the seller is experiencing a life event. When somebody’s experiencing a life event, they thank you. As soon as they get on the phone, they say, “Your letter came here. Your offer came at a perfect time. What’s the next step?” They don’t say, “I got your letter for $28,000. Make it $50,000.”

Don’t wear the seller down. All you need to do is agree on the price—and it has to be a great property, or you’re not buying it. It’s that simple. Share on X

There’s a crazy high percentage chance that you’re not going to buy that property. There are people in our group who are very successful, but they have to analyze every deal sixteen different ways to Sunday. Eventually, they get to the same place that Jill gets. Jill can spend half an hour getting a deal done. For some people, it takes 80 hours a week.

If somebody calls back and says, “$28,000 doesn’t work, $50,000 does,” you can say, “Thanks very much. $28,000 is what I’m willing to pay.” A predictable percentage of people, about 5% to 10%, will say, “Okay.” If you want to call them for the rest of your life in this career, there’s a chance you’ll get into that 10% and maybe change somebody’s mind. The fact is, the number on the document that I’ve come up with or you will come up with in your mailer is the price that it needs to be purchased.

That’s the whole big point. The whole point of how we do things here is that I’m not haggling and wearing them down. Some people, that’s their goal, to wear them down. I’ve heard people doing that when they drive for dollars for houses. They almost wear them down, calling them over and over again. It’s the weirdest thing. If they don’t want to sell, they don’t want to sell. What I’m doing is I ask, “Are you in a position that you need to sell? Do you want to sell?” If they’re like, “I am,” all we have to do is agree on the price. It needs to be a great property, or I’m not going to buy it. That’s it. It’s that simple.

A material percent of the people who are reading this are saying to themselves, “That’s not how it works.” That’s exactly how it works, and that won’t change. We’re in the AI age. It used to be the information age. Now, it’s a whole different deal. We’re in a hockey stick situation with how much technology we have in our lives. I happen to think that’s a good thing for the most part. We embrace that.

In the end, I don’t care how much technology you have. They’re going to accept the number that you sent them or not. Join us in the next episode where Jill and I talk about the best and worst states for land buying. You’re not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.